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What We All Need to Know About Artificial Intelligence

Posted: September 3, 2018

Artificial intelligence offers exciting opportunities to businesses. HY+ is keeping ahead of the game with Aalto PRO and Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence FCAI by organising a very topical programme about the subject called Diploma in Artificial Intelligence.

Is Artificial Intelligence “Rocket Science”?

Why is artificial intelligence so important at the moment? As someone whose experience of AI is mainly limited to watching science fiction films, I decided to look for a more scientific approach and pose some questions to Teemu Roos, Associate Professor of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki. He is also one of the instructors of the Diploma in Artificial Intelligence programme.

“AI is really not ‘rocket science’ – as the saying goes. Anyone can learn AI”, Roos responds when I ask him to explain artificial intelligence to someone who doesn’t know much about it. He explains that AI is a set of tools and techniques that can be used to automate some reasoning and decision-making processes that we normally associate with intelligence.

“Good examples of useful AI methods include route planning algorithms that are used in navigation applications, game-playing algorithms that can be used to beat humans in chess or the game of Go, or machine learning algorithms that use data to predict real-estate prices or to identify symptoms of diabetes from heart rate sensors”, Roos lists. He also reminds me that the field of AI is vast and no-one can ever master all of it in detail, but it’s very useful for everyone to know at least the basic principles.

According to Roos, the basic principles will help us understand the mechanisms by which the use of AI can lead to. “After all, AI is already today involved in our everyday life – often much more than we tend to realize”, he notes. This means that most likely my experiences of AI aren’t as limited as I thought, I just haven’t been aware of them.

Artificial versus Human Intelligence

From time to time, questions arise regarding artificial intelligence’s relationship to human intelligence. How far are we from human intelligence in AI technology? According to Roos, that is actually not the question. “You have to first understand that intelligence is not a one-dimensional scale like temperature or length that you could measure”, he explains. “Intelligence is more like an infinite number of different and independent scales: one aspect of intelligence is the ability to play chess, for instance, and another one is to fold the laundry, and so on.”

Roos explains the nature of intelligence: “With humans, different aspects of intelligence or skill are usually somewhat correlated, so that, say, a five-year old child is not very good at chess nor folding the laundry whereas an adult is usually better at both. With AI, the algorithms are designed for one task at a time, and a chess-bot that beats the world champion has no ability to fold the laundry, or in fact anything else but chess. Therefore, we can’t put humans at a certain point on an intelligence scale and AI at another point, and look how far they are from each other.”

Roos’s explanation makes a lot of sense and also the comparing of human intelligence and artificial intelligence kind of irrelevant. As Roos points out, there are obviously tasks that computers are much better at than humans, such as calculating with large numbers, but humans are better at many tasks that involve communication in human language and reasoning in complex real-world scenarios. “Somewhat ironically, simple common sense reasoning that even a small child can do, has turned out to be the hardest challenge in AI”, Roos unveils.

We can admittedly state that learning about AI is important to keep up with the way of the world and to get all use out of it as well. Roos tells me that many processes in business ranging from production to services can be made more efficient by automatization, which AI offers many tools for. AI can also enable new processes and business opportunities.

“Once we realize that humans and computers are good at different things, we can much better identify how to build ‘dream teams’ where humans solve the tasks where we are good at and computers solve the ones where they are better”, Roos concludes.

Benefits of the Diploma in Artificial Intelligence Programme

Diploma in Artificial Intelligence Programme offers an excellent opportunity to learn more about AI and how to make good use of it in business life. The programme is based on top-notch scientific expertise and designed by highly acclaimed university researchers who will also deliver the training in person. This way the participants will actually get to interact with the scientists at the forefront of AI research.

“We have also incorporated the latest industry insights into the training by working together with carefully selected companies that have succeeded at developing some of the most exciting and innovative AI applications on the market”, Roos describes the programme. “The participants will not only learn the state-of-the-art AI technologies, but they will also have an opportunity to apply their learnings in their own business sectors and organizations and receive feedback from other participants and the training staff.”

The Diploma in Artificial Intelligence is an exceptionally comprehensive programme that covers the most important areas of AI including data management and data quality, visualization and data analysis, machine learning, neural networks, usability, platforms, and privacy, as well as AI in business. “The fact that the training is delivered by world-class scientists in collaboration with industry-leading experts guarantees that the content is up-to-date and maximally relevant for your business”, Roos states.

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